Performing "The Peach Thief"

Ex Libris De Corpus

Ex Libris De Corpus (roughly translated to From the Books of the Body) is a multi-year journey to ink San Francisco-based writer and performer Jason Wyman from neck to toe using illustrations inspired by his dark fables and fairy tales and inked by tattooist and native San Franciscan Oliver Wong. Obsessed with immolation and transfiguration, Jason obscures the line between dreams and reality in all of his tales. In fact, in most of them, the main character either dies or transcends as in all of nature.

Now, Jason is partnering with Oliver and local artists and photographers to ink these tales on his body and capture the transformation from normalish 30-something former Minnesotan suburbanite into a modern day "Illustrated Man" where each tattoo tells a tale. Using fiction, illustration, tattooing, performance, publishing, photography, and social media to tell the complete story, Ex Libris De Corpus seeks to blur the boundaries between permanence and impermanence.

Ultimately, Jason will die, and after his death his cremated ashes will spread down the Mississippi (from the land of his birth) across the Pacific (from the land of his home) dissolving into nothingness and returning to the greater cycle. And only shadows and reflections will remain in memories, photos, books, and (hopefully) galleries.